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Technological change


Jeff Wexler

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Almost certainly a MItchell in a blimp.

 

The blimp looks a little off-standard but the magazine says "NC 34"

 

NC is an abbreviation for "Newsreel camera." That's a MItchell model. Until Panavision became popular and the Arriflex 35 BL became available (early 1970s), virtually all Hollywood movies, if not three-strip Technicolor, were shot with a Mitchell. It was a noisy camera but had a very dependable intermittent movement with very good registration. The Mitchell movement is the template for the Panavision movement.

 

For sound work, the NC camera would be mounted in a blimp to contain the sound of the transport. When the blimp was made by MItchell, the camera was known as a BNCR (Blimped Newsreel Camera Reflex). The earlier models were not reflex - only reflex by rackover. (The camera viewfinder could look through the lens only when the whole body was racked-over to a viewing position. For shooting, the camera was racked back to filming position and the operator looked through a parallax corrected viewfinder.) The iconic BNCR was reflex. But this particular Mitchell example was (most probably) not reflex, not a BNCR, only an NC in a blimp fabricated by another company.

 

David

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